Today’s liturgical memorial of Blessed Gerard is relatively unknown among us except for those who follow the Benedictine and Cistercian charism. Blessed Gerard is the second eldest blood brother of Saint Bernard. History reveals to us that Gerard followed Bernard to Clairvaux where he became his cellarer. Gerard initially refused to enter the monastery but later received the habit at Cîteaux in 1112; and then followed his brother to make a monastic foundation at Clairvaux in 1115. There he served as the competent and virtuous cellarer for the Cistercian community. We know that Gerard was Bernard’s confidant and assistant. The feast was originally on January 30, but settled on today’s date, but sometimes you have his feast on June 14.
Deeply grieved at Dom Gerard’s death, Bernard lamented his passing in these tender words:
… a loyal companion has left me alone on the pathway of life: he who was so alert to my needs, so enterprising at work, so agreeable in his ways. Who was ever so necessary to me? Who ever loved me as he? My brother by blood, but bound to me more intimately by religious profession. Share my mourning with me, you who know these things. I was frail in body and he sustained me, faint of heart and he gave me courage, slothful and negligent and he spurred me on, forgetful and improvident and he gave me timely warning. Why has he been torn from me? Why snatched from my embraces, a man of one mind with me, a man according to my heart? We loved each other in life: how can it be that death separates us? And how bitter the separation that only death could bring about! While you lived when did you ever abandon me? It is totally death’s doing, so terrible a parting…How much better for me then, O Gerard, if I had lost my life rather than your company, since through your tireless inspiration, your unfailing help and under your provident scrutiny I persevered with my studies of things divine. Why, I ask, have we loved, why have we lost each other?
Text from Bernard to Clairvaux’s Sermon 26: On The Song of Songs.